Kent Cravens, who resigned his post in the New Mexico Senate 2011 so that he could become the state’s top oil and gas lobbyist, assured the Senate Conservation Committee last month that hydraulic fracturing was safe, clean and necessary. Here are highlights of the rebuttal testimony he gave after I spoke on the dangers […]

A formatted copy of this post is available here. (PDF - 483kB) Photo by Katherine Minott I recently provided expert witness testimony to the New Mexico Senate Conservation Committee for a bill to ban the spread of a controversial method of oil and gas extraction known as high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking." New Mexico is […]

The paper I presented at the APEC Conference last October in Vladivostok, Russia has been published in the conference proceedings, and is now available online. The paper is about microgrids, which are electric power systems that have been decentralized to the point that they can stand alone from the larger power grid. You can download […]

To my dear followers and all of you who might find this blog. I have moved it to a new location, and under a new name: Life, Radically Homemade.I invite you to visit me there, and sign up if you wish to follow stories from the permaculture homestead. My voice and writing will be enriched […]

On the short list of favorite trees to use in permaculture - Mulberry. Handsome and fast growing, drought resistant even in our dry climate (7"/ 18cm of rain annually), with large canopy that cast much needed shade - this tree also have a lot to offer to critters, birds and people. Mulberries bear delicious sweet […]

There are two chicken flocks at our permaculture farm right now. The egg layers and the meat breed chicks live separately, their life paths and destinies diverging. The egg layers are free ranging, while the meat-breed chicks are raised on a diverse pasture, roaming free over a large piece of land, but enclosed none-the-less. Chickens […]

We are so happy to welcome twin baby boys to our lives, born to my step-daughter on the 8th of this month. I was honored to host her Mother Blessing ceremony - an opportunity to gather women friends and family and acknowledge the blossoming of the mother-to-be, her morphing into a new person. This ceremony […]

"Monday is rice day" - a statement familiar to many Waldorf homes, where families attempt to craft and follow rhythmical life. Following a rhythm is not only something that parents of young children discover, often with initial dismay ("Too boring!") and later with firmness and comfort ("Today is our park day!"). Rhythmical life naturally evolves […]

The UK’s state-owned Green Investment Bank (GIB) has made its first investment in social housing. The bank has committed £2.5 million ($3.7 million) to a project to install energy efficient, low-carbon heating systems in up to 28 sheltered housing developments managed by UK property company Places for People.